Artifice Page 84

First, it’s been a crazy last few days, but thanks to your amazingly generous support, the Kickstarter goal was reached—in less than 48 hours! O_O That means ARTIFICE WILL BE PRINTED! Woo hoo! Thank you all so, so much!

Now, the Kickstarter campaign has still got 25 days left and so that means it’s still running and new folks can still back it. And that’s a good thing because 1) you can still pre-order books through it and 2) it allows me to create some “bonus goals”—targets that when reached would mean I could afford to commission Winona to create special Artifice pin-ups and additional short comics in the Artifice world (including, potentially, an additional romantic flashback scene on Da Vinci Four which would answer some more questions and, of course, show the kissing and stuff y’all wanted to see more of. 😀 )

I discuss the “bonus goals” here, but let me say a couple things about pre-ordering Artifice books through Kickstarter. First off, backers in the U.S. get free shipping which is something special I’m offering to Kickstarter backers as a way to say “thank you” for taking a chance on me. Secondly, if you want a book sooner rather than later, you should pre-order through Kickstarter and if you want a book signed by both Winona and me, it looks like you’ll need to order through Kickstarter (at least for the foreseeable future).

Signing and shipping out these books for backers will be a huge push, so I won’t be offering the books for sale on my Web site until ALL backers have received their books (and then probably not until a few months after that when I’ve recovered…). Also, Winona lives across the country from me. That means I’m flying her to San Francisco so we can sign these books together—and she’s very busy and in-demand, which means there’s a limit to how many books it’s realistic to ask her to sign with me. I crunched the numbers and came up with a maximum amount of signed books that we could do together in a reasonable amount of time and figured it would still be more than enough to cover interest. Heck, I figured there would be a bunch of extras left over! Well, things have been going just a wee a bit better than I expected (we’re at 163% funding!) and right now—if all you want is a book signed by both of us—there are just 48 left of that reward and they are going fast. So, please, if it’s really, really important to you to get a book signed by both of us

Now, please, please don’t worry—if you can’t afford to do it right now, I absolutely will be making these books for sale through other means, most likely in early 2013. And if you just want my John Hancock alone in the book, no problem! I can do that anytime! But you are my faithful readers and I want to make sure you have first dibs on anything I put out. 🙂 And things are happening with the Kickstarter project A LOT faster than I expected…

(And in that vein, I want to offer android-strength hugs to everyone who has been helping me get the word out. On Monday I had four times the unique visitors and page views to this webcomic I’ve ever had. Quadruple! And I owe it all to your kind words on Facebook, reddit, Tumblr, Twitter and your favorite forums and blogs. As always, you just astound me with your generosity and support. 😀 And there are still those 25 days left to the project so if you can please keep recommending the comic and the Kickstarter project to your friends, I’d really, really appreciate it!)

O.K.! And the other news? It’s even more good news!

Today I’m launching the follow-up webcomic to Artifice—The Young Protectors!

Now, there are still more pages of Artifice to go, of course, but I really love the community we’ve built here and I don’t ever want to see it end. So, I’m hoping that if I start this early, then maybe some of you would be willing to give the new comic a chance, and I’ll have some familiar faces and friends on this new journey. 🙂 Now, it’s a different genre—superheros—and it starts off a lot lighter (and with more yaoi) than Artifice did. But I did my best to make it into a fun time and, since this is me, I promise we get to some dark and serious stuff later on. 😉

I’ve just put up the first 3 pages to get us started and while Artifice is running, I’m going to be updating it on Mondays. (I’ll move it to Saturdays once Artifice is complete.) I really do hope you’ll give it a chance. It’s called

And in addition all to your generous backing of the Kickstarter project as well as blowing well past the last donation target, we are now at $82 towards the next bonus page!

Special thanks go out to long-time supporter Nicholas H. (who makes their 4th generous donation to Artifice!) and a warm welcome and grateful bow go out to new supporters Sandra B., MASAYA K., JAMES E. & Roger R. for their generous donations over the last few days!

Big hugs go out to Larisa V. who has just made their tenth super-generous $25 donation (and their third in a week and a half!) A big thank you with that big hug, Larisa! 😀

All righty! There’s lots more I have to say to you, but my usually pithy note has now turned into a small Russian novel. So, once again, please let me say how deeply, deeply grateful I am to you all. I’ve loved reading your comments on the last page. Winona and I couldn’t wait to share that page with you—and to have such a big reaction to it… Well, that’s dream-come-true stuff for us. Thank you so much for being the most awesome readers in the world! 🙂

If you particularly enjoy any of these pages and use Facebook, please click the Like button on that page. It’s useful to know what’s working and it helps me get the word out!